The Lake of the Sky eBook

When the day is calm there is a ring
around the Lake extending from a hundred yards
to a mile from the shore which is the most brilliant
green; within this ring there is another zone of the
deepest blue, and this gives place to royal purple
in the distance; and the color of the Lake changes
from day to day and from hour to hour. It
is never twice the same—­sometimes the blue
is lapis lazuli, then it is jade, then it is purple,
and when the breeze gently ruffles the surface
it is silvery-gray. The Lake has as many
moods as an April day or a lovely woman. But its
normal appearance is that of a floor of lapis lazuli
set with a ring of emerald.

The depth of the water, varying as it does from a
few feet to nearly or over 2000 feet, together with
the peculiarly variable bottom of the Lake, have much
to do with these color effects. The lake bottom
on a clear wind-quiet day can be clearly seen except
in the lowest depths. Here and there are patches
of fairly level area, covered either with rocky bowlders,
moss-covered rocks, or vari-colored sands. Then,
suddenly, the eye falls upon a ledge, on the yonder
side of which the water suddenly becomes deep blue.
That ledge may denote a submarine precipice, a hundred,
five hundred, a thousand or more feet deep, and the
changes caused by such sudden and awful depths are
beyond verbal description.

Many of the softer color-effects are produced by the
light colored sands that are washed down into the
shallower waters by the mountain streams. These
vary considerably, from almost white and cream, to
deep yellow, brown and red. Then the mosses that
grow on the massive bowlders, rounded, square and
irregular, of every conceivable size, that are strewn
over the lake bottom, together with the equally varied
rocks of the shore-line, some of them towering hundreds
of feet above the water—­these have their
share in the general enchantment and revelry of color.

Emerald Bay and Meek’s Bay are justly world-famed
for their triumphs of color glories, for here there
seem to be those peculiar combinations of varied objects,
and depths, from the shallowest to the deepest, with
the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom,
as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying
on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere.
The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing
the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes.
Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but
childish and puerile attempts at reproduction, and
finest Turkish shawls, Bokhara rugs or Arab sheiks’
dearest-prized Prayer Carpets are but glimmering suggestions
of what the Master Artist himself has here produced.